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Road Warrior Animal
When Paul Ellering was looking to put together a stable of heels in Georgia Championship Wrestling called The Legion of Doom, it was decided to put Joe together with his good friend Mike Hegstrand and change their names to "Animal" and "Hawk" respectively. Thus, the Road Warriors were born. To look more intimidating, the two shaved their heads into Mohawks and started wearing studded dog collars, spiked shoulder pads, and face paint. The look and name was taken from Mad Max 2, helping to paint the two as no-mercy monsters. Their interview style was vicious, yet charismatic and a bit humorous. The Road Warriors immediately signed with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1990 and were pushed into a feud with the most famous of all “Road Warrior Clones”, Demolition, a group which included their old training partner Barry Darsow.22324. Due to the ailing health of one of Demolition (Bill Eadie/"Ax") he was replaced by Crush but the magic of the original Demolition was gone and the feud did not live up to the high hopes of the fans.3Just over a year after signing with the WWF, the Legion of Doom won the WWF World Tag Team Titles and held them for about 8 months.5 When they lost the titles, they briefly left the WWF, only to return with long time manager Paul Ellering by their side, as well as a wooden ventriloquist dummy called “Rocco”. Both members of the L.O.D. thought the gimmick was stupid, and it led to Hegstrand quitting the WWF, leaving Laurinaitis on his own for the first time in 9 years.25 Being a businessman, Animal went ahead and finished his contractual obligations with the WWF. During a handicap match against the Beverly Brothers, Laurinaitis legitimately injured his back from a botched double suplex and had to take a lengthy hiatus.4 Laurinaitis made some non-wrestling appearances in WCW in 1993. On , at the Clash of the Champions, Animal made his appearance, getting out of a red corvette indicating his partner Hawk was Dustin Rhodes' mystery partner against Rick Rude and The Equalizer. That September at Fall Brawl, Animal was the advisor for Sting's team, consisting of Sting, Davey Boy Smith, Dustin Rhodes, and The Shockmaster for WarGames, defeating Big Van Vader, Sid Vicious, and Harlem Heat. For the next couple of years, Laurinaitis stayed out of the wrestling ring, collecting on a very lucrative insurance policy from Lloyd's of London while Hegstrand competed all over the world. Near the end of 1995, Laurinaitis' back had finally recovered enough for him to return to active competition. Three years after everyone thought the Road Warriors had ended, they reunited and signed a contract with World Championship Wrestling. Upon their debut in 1996, they immediately started a feud with the Steiner Brothers and Harlem Heat, before moving on to challenge the WCW Tag Team Champions Sting & Lex Luger. The Road Warriors had several shots at the champions but never won the titles in the 6 months they were with the company. After leaving WCW they returned to the WWF where the Legion of Doom took part in the Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. the Hart Foundation feud, siding with Austin against the Harts.. The Legion of Doom also became 2 time tag team champions on October 7, 1997 when they defeated The Godwinns. In November 1997, the Legion of Doom faced the newly formed New Age Outlaws (Road Dogg and Billy Gunn) and lost the titles to the upstart team. After several unsuccessful challenges the L.O.D. were repackaged as Legion of Doom 2000 with manager Sunny, although she did not stay with the team for long. At the same time, Paul Ellering returned, but sided with D.O.A., whom L.O.D. were feuding with at the time; Ellering and Animal explained on the Road Warriors DVD that it was hard for Ellering to work with another team against the Road Warriors and difficult to rip on his former team on promos. In 1998, the Legion of Doom became involved in their most controversial angle, playing off Hegstrand’s real life drug and alcohol problems. Hawk started to show up drunk or “unable to perform” on TV. As Hawk proved more and more erratic and unreliable, a third L.O.D. member, Puke, was introduced to team with Animal while Hawk dealt with his personal issues. The storyline ended with accusations that Puke had been the "enabler" of Hawk's problems, exploiting them to take Hawk’s place in the team. During the controversial segment, Hawk infamously was shown to have fallen off the Titan Tron Neither Hegstrand nor Laurinaitis approved of the WWF exploiting Hegstrand’s personal problems, which caused them to subsequently leave the WWF. While the Road Warriors never officially broke up, Animal started making an increasing number of solo appearances after they left the WWF as Hegstrand struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. In 2001 Animal landed a prominent position in WCW as the “Enforcer” of the stable known as The Magnificent Seven with the objective to protect WCW World Champion Scott Steiner.31 Laurinaitis most likely landed the high-profile role thanks to his brother John who had a powerful behind-the-scenes role with the company. The Magnificent Seven split up shortly before Vince McMahon purchased WCW; Animal’s contract was not one of the contracts the WWF picked up. Animal and Hawk made a surprise appearance on RAW on May 12, 2003 when they took on Kane and Rob Van Dam for the World Tag Team Championship. Although Hawk and Animal came up short in their attempt to become three-time champions, it was clear that Hawk had defeated the demons that had once kept him from competing, and the Road Warriors had hopes of returning to WWE. However, Hawk died on October 19, 2003. Animal made a return to WWE on an episode of SmackDown! in 2005, where he was challenged by the then-WWE Tag Team Champions MNM to a title match at The Great American Bash.3435 Finding a new tag team partner in Heidenreich, Animal went on to defeat MNM for the titles, dedicating the win to Hawk by saying, "Hawk, this one's for you, brother!"25 The two would team up for a few months in a new chapter of the Legion of Doom, with Heidenreich adopting the L.O.D.'s shoulder pads, face paint, and mohawk haircut. However, this came to an end with Heidenreich's release from WWE on January 17, 2006.36On the March 3, 2006 episode of SmackDown!, Animal teamed up with Matt Hardy to face MNM. After he and Hardy lost the match, Animal turned heel for the second time in his career by attacking and injuring Hardy's knee.37 Animal reasoned that he had realized that Hardy and Heidenreich were screw-ups and that Road Warrior Hawk was the only tag team legend and partner for him. After the heel turn, Animal, once again known simply as The Road Warrior, would drop many aspects of the well-known Road Warrior gimmick, losing the face paint, and shoulder pads. Animal's look at this time was similar to his old Road Warrior gimmick in the early 1980s he had prior to teaming up with Hawk.In his final WWE appearance, Animal defeated Paul Burchill on the May 6, 2006 edition of Velocity 38 This was his final WWE television appearance. On June 26, 2006, Animal was released from his WWE contract.39